Building DIY Arduino, Pi Watch : Discussion of Options

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It is not very difficult for a newbie to build a DIY Arduino wrist watch. Just our Arduino Clock project and altering components with ATtiny 13 or ATtiny 10 does the job. You just need to build a prototype with all components (not modules), design the circuit to test. Rest is ordering PCB fabrication and assembling service – hardly $15 service. If components cost $30, then cost with battery is around $50. But is that practical to wear? Is that cost effective or unique? Here is Discussion of Options Around Building DIY Arduino, Pi Watch. There Are More Matters Like the Casing To Get an Usable Wrist Watch or Table Clock.

Building DIY Arduino, Pi Watch : Do Not Build a Toy

Our above example is meaningless to give effort. You’ll get cheap China LED watch at fraction of cost. You should watch the watch market and understand what is not available at cheap rate but you can build at cheaper rate for your need.

China made Smartwatches cost just less. Within $20 you’ll get watch with touch display, 2G Sim Card Support, memory Card support, 2 mp camera, sync functions, Bluetooth and Android and iOS Mobile Phone compatibility. You’ll not get – a good casing, proper quality control, usually no WiFi, no 4G, no way to upgrade components.

There are smartwatch development kits.

Watch casings are sold. You can practically buy casing of any company. I had to change casing of my one Tata Titan’s wrist watch. Watch industry actually quite open. You can perform web search with wrist watch casing and find lot of options.

I think, you should think about these features for your DIY smartwatch :

WiFi connectivity

Functions to control automation of your house, car etc

SD card support

Better MP3 playing capability

Music Visualizer

Some navigation which has control on data theft

All ways to notify your family members in trouble

Longer battery life and possibility to charge in many ways

May be unlocking needs your continuous bio-metric input

May be blood pressure measurement

It is not practical to build something like Apple’s watch. Most of the commercial watches bloated with too many features forgetting the basic function. It is not practical to build something which will help Governments and companies to track you. You must not build a radio-collar.

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Common Problems of Building DIY Arduino, Pi Watch

You’ll face trouble to find high resolution round OLED touch screen display. Indeed, it is more difficult for AMOLED display. You can connect 40 pin displays using this kind of breakout :

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https://www.adafruit.com/product/1590

You can look at what peoples made :

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https://www.hackster.io/projects/tags/smartwatch

Considering many matters, I would tend to fallback to eInk (e-paper) watch :